playing in the woods specific HT?

I've got a XC ht (or 2) and a fs but I fancy selling the long distance geom frames and getting something perky that loves manuals & wheelies etc & loves just playing. Not biased against 27.5 or 29 but I'm too tall for 26" I was thinking 27.5" soul but not sure that is just replacing like for like with what I have (Pegasus & Swift) geometry wise.
So what is out there with long top tube, plenty of stand over & short stays?

I'd reckon 26" wheels will be currency for silly little hardtails for a long time yet..

Agreed. That and 100mm forks. I'm just over 6' and 26" would be just the thing for bombholes and jumpy lines. Big forks just make them feel unwieldy and nose-divey to me, the whole point of a little play-in-woods HT is making it easy to get off the ground and move about?

Just watch Kranked 1 and 2 for inspiration on what a 100mm forked HT can do : ) Chameleons and Z1s and Azonic bars, those were the days .. 1x8 for XC ..

C'mon, you can't dismiss 26" and still be considering 27.5". You're an intellgent man, you know there's bugger all difference between them.

If there really is a perceivable difference between them then, when you say "something perky that loves manuals & wheelies etc & loves just playing", that screams BMX to me, ie. smaller wheels = good. Plenty of tall people manage to ride BMX's so you know the height thing is bull.

Re. obsolescence. Go to your local trail centre and you'll see that at least 80% of the bikes being ridden are 26". Only things to worry about regarding obsolescence are frames that won't take a tapered fork IMHO. Even if all 26" forks ceased production tomorrow you'd still be able to stick a 27.5" fork on and never notice the difference.

I'm reasonable tall (6"2") and when I wanted a bike for mucking around in the woods I went with a Slackline and couldn't be happier with it. If you want to go 27.5" then there's the Switchback.

I don't know why I wrote all that as you should buy whatever makes you happy, but your (and plenty of other peoples) reasoning for dismissing 26" always seems slightly misguided to me.

How can you possibly be too big for a bike just because of the wheel size? Load of bollocks. If the contact points are the same distance apart it doesn't matter what size the wheels are, as far as sizing goes. You just prefer bigger wheels, it's nothing to do with your height.

Anyway, in true STW style I'm going to reccome

nd a BFe as I have one and it is brilliant for messing around in the woods. If you insist on being tied by the sizen of the wheels. Then how about a Yelly Yelli Screamy, and in true STW style I have never rode a ?Yelli Screamy

I_Ache - Member
How can you possibly be too big for a bike just because of the wheel size? Load of bollocks

Man [magazine mode] it's all about being "in" the bike rather than being perched precariously "on" the bike[/magazine mode]

Ridiculous but actually pretty accurate of how a 26" bike feels to me. Only realised this after my first 29er ride about 6 years ago.

C'mon, you can't dismiss 26" and still be considering 27.5". You're an intellgent man, you know there's bugger all difference between them.

Also intelligent enough to know if the industry isn't supporting 26" products much now it'll be even less in the future so there's no point burying ones head in the sand and pretending it's all a bad dream